


running with knives

by mnemememory



Series: breaking even [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Eventual Romance, F/F, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-06 02:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14632176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnemememory/pseuds/mnemememory
Summary: Yasha is bad at people.or; the five times Yasha is bad at people and Beau intervenes, the one time Beau is bad at people and Yasha intervenes, and the six times Fjord is forced to pick up after these garbage losers who need to stop talking to people, okay?





	1. chapter 1

**running with knives**

...

...

Yasha is _so bad at people_ , okay.

“Just go find somewhere for us to stay,” Fjord says, half-distracted with wrangling Nott to the ground. A vial of acid drops from her pockets and onto the snow next to them, eating through the ice and burning a patchy mark along Fjord’s hand. Yasha considers helping, and then decides that she doesn’t want to give Nott any more ammunition to her scared of her. Drunk or not, picking a fight with someone Yasha’s size isn’t going to go over well for the goblin. “Anywhere,” he adds, a touch desperately, as Nott sinks her unprotected teeth into his forearm.

“Nott! Nott! It is okay, you don’t need to bite F _j_ ord,” Jester says, reappearing with a box of doughnuts. Yasha is unsure of how she had managed to procure them at such a late hour. “I have food. You can bite this instead.”

She shoves a doughnut into Nott’s mouth, heedless of the sharp teeth. Yasha stays around long enough to make sure that no one is coming to investigate the impromptu commotion. There are guards patrolling – not many, but enough – and they hadn’t seen anyone around for almost half an hour, so they were probably due. Much as Yasha didn’t want to pay for an inn – she had only crashed the second half of their last job, and hadn’t really felt good taking a full cut – she didn’t want to get out of it by spending a night in the stockade. Cell bars made her itchy.

There isn’t anyone wandering around outside, which was both a blessing and a hindrance, because can’t seem to find anywhere that’s open. Two in the morning is, admittedly, an awkward time to come into town – but they hadn’t really had much choice, considering all the bandits they had encountered on the road in. Three fights, two avoidances and a half-triggered ambush (half, because Yasha had cut their leader in half thirty seconds into the fray) later, and none of them had gotten a good night’s rest in almost three days. Nott was more irritable than ever, which meant Caleb was pricklier than ever, which meant that Molly was as insufferable as ever, which meant that no one got a minute’s peace between the three of them. Jester had been just as bad, if not somehow worse.

Sometimes, Yasha has to very seriously go over the pros and cons of working with this band of weirdos. They always seemed to come up on top, but it can get awful close.

Twenty minutes later, Yasha finds somewhere that doesn’t look outright condemned. None of the buildings in town look too great, but at least this one has a functional roof. Yasha isn’t too keen on waking up with snow in her hair. Again.

“Finally,” she says, shifting her broadsword so that it betters fits along the slope of her back. She isn’t dressed for the cold, which is just perfect. Catching up to her travelling companions had been a feat of patience and panic, because it was _so difficult_ to catch the tail end of a hot trail. Everywhere Yasha goes, she’s hearing things about her chosen group of psychopaths – “They just swooped in”, people say, dazed. “And killed it”. Yasha would be proud, if they would just _stay in one place_ for a period of time. Travelling was an expensive endeavour, when she couldn’t stop to take bounties, and coupled with all the little errands her god required of her –

Above her, thunder growls, low and threatening above the fat cloud cover. Yasha carefully puts her thoughts of blasphemy away, because she doesn’t mean them, not really. There isn’t much she wouldn’t do for the Stormlord, but it’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to displeasing the gods.

Light peeks through the cracks underneath the inn’s door – Yasha squints at the name: _The Swooping Dragon_ – and seeps out through the grimy windows, though they’re partially covered with some kind of fabric. Yasha can’t look inside, but she’s confident enough that they’re open for business. The cold has long-since settled dep into her bones, and she shrugs a few times to dislodge some snow from where it’s settled on her shoulders. She wishes that one of her companions were here, but it would be better to book the rooms now and have them pay her back later. They could afford it, really – she’d seen the _actual_ price on that last monster hoard, and she’s almost resentful that she hadn’t managed to kill more.

Thunder cracks like a broken bone, and she grins at the sky. “Don’t be silly,” she says, quietly. To herself, really. “I don’t mind.”

And she doesn’t. Yasha maybe minds having to leave so much, but only a little bit. She enjoys walking, enjoys the solitude of her own company, enjoys the solitude of her god. And if she can bridge herself between these two worlds – serene loneliness and aggressive indulgence – well. This isn’t such a bad way to live.

Yasha opens the door to the inn and is greeted with a blast of warm air. It’s enough of a difference in temperature to send the ends of her braids frizzing. Some residual snow melts into her scalp, and she grimaces as it trickles down her ear like cold blood.

There aren’t many people on the inside – it’s a bar-setup on the first floor, with a set of stairs leading higher. Yasha had counted three stories outside, and she hopes that there’s enough rooms to outfit her friends, because camping outside in the cold isn’t much of an option anymore. Caleb has been sniffling for the past day and a half, leading to Nott fussing, leading to Nott drinking, leading to Nott attacking Fjord in the middle of the road after a misguidedly concerned suggestion that _Maybe, Nott, you should take a break_?

A bartender is slouched over the counter, listlessly pushing a piece of cloth back and forth across the same piece of wood, face smooshed down. He looks almost skeletal, clothing ratty and beard – what little Yasha can see of it – unkempt.

“Uh, good evening,” Yasha says, closing the door carefully behind her and stepping further inside. There’s a fireplace in the corner, as well as three tables set up to the other side of the room. Someone is passed out drunk in the corner, lazily snoring. “I was hoping –”

The bartender looks up. His eyes widen, and he pitches backwards onto the floor. “BANDIT!” he screams at the top of his lungs, and scrabbles underneath the bar.

Yasha stares at him.

Above her, something heavy slams into the floor. There’s a shout of, “ _WHAT_?”, and then Yasha hears someone stumble their way downstairs. A moment later, a small gnome with a massive spear comes into view, dressed in a pair of underpants and a long white sleeping gown. He stumbles on the edge of the gown, loosening his grip on the spear, and clatters down the final half-flight of stairs shrieking all the way.

“Oh,” Yasha says, starting forward. “Are you oaky –?”

“BANDIT!” the bartender yells again, and then Yasha hears a small “ow” as he slams his head into the bottom of the counter.

“Oh,” Yasha says again, glancing from the bartender to the gnome, who is tugging futilely at his mess of a dressing gown in order to get to his feet. In the corner, the drunk man continues to snow. “Oh, no, there’s been some mistake – _I’m_ not a bandit –”

“I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR KIND,” the gnome yells, finally getting to his feet and heaving the spear into the air. It’s twice as tall as he is, with a sharpened point that gleams wickedly in the firelight. The tip wobbles under the uneven distribution of weight, but ultimately holds. “COMING INTO MY HOME, DRINKING MY LIQUOR –”

“I’m really not a bandit,” Yasha says, glancing back of her shoulder.

“– RUNNING OFF WITH MY FOOD, STEALING THE FURNITURE –”

“I’m just looking for a place for me and my friends to stay.”

“– KIDNAPPING MY COOK –”

“Please stop yelling,” Yasha says. The drunk man snores.

By now, three more people have begun to descend from upstairs – a balding human in his mid-thirties, a female halfling with a crossbow, and someone’s trouser-clad legs. Yasha isn’t in much of a position to scope out the extra competition, because she isn’t quite sure what’s going on.

“– DESTROYING MY NEWLY RENOVATED WALLS –”

Yasha looks at the walls. They have not, in recent years, been painted over with anything but cobwebs and dust.

“I can leave,” Yasha says, a bit helplessly.

“– SETTING FIRE TO ME –”

Yasha turns around and walks out.

Well, she _tries_ to walk out. When she opens the door – to be bit with another blast of air, this time unpleasantly bracing – she is also hit by a smaller body. Beau stares up at her, smudgy makeup doing nothing to hide the exhaustion pulling under her eyes.

“Oh, hey,” she says, patting Yasha on the forearm. “We thought you’d gotten lost. The rest of the group’s not too far behind, we just had to go and find Molly – he’d wondered off, wouldn’t say _where to_ , that shady bastard –”

“– KILLING MY FAVOURITE CHICKEN –”

Beau bends to one side, so she can look around Yasha and see the source of the commotion.

“They think I’m a bandit,” Yasha says, embarrassed. While admittedly this was one of the more extreme reactions she’s ever had to her appearance, it certainly wasn’t uncommon amongst the smaller towns. People with odd faces and odd hairstyles and odd, well, height, tended not to be too popular within the Empire. Especially if they had blood dried on their armour and were in bandit-infested territory.

Beau’s eyes narrow. “Do they,” she says. It isn’t a question.

“– SMEARING ITS BLOOD ALL OVER MY –”

Beau goes up and punches the gnome square in the jaw.

Yasha’s eyes go wide, and she instinctively moves to square up behind Beau. She isn’t _trying_ to be intimidating, but it’s probably the easiest option at the moment, now that diplomacy has been knocked clean out of the ballpark. Literally, it seems. The gnome didn’t seem to be moving.

“Soft head,” beau says, flapping her wrist out and then falling back into a now-familiar defensive position. She grins at the gathering crowd. “ _Well_? Do _you_ guys think my friend is a bandit, too?”

“ANOTHER ONE!” the bartender wails, and then tries to duck once again back under the counter. On the way down, he knocks his forehead and sprawls back into one of the shelves. The wall of dull-coloured bottles shakes, and for one clear moment, Yasha can see exactly where this is going to go.

Slowly – oh, so slowly – the shelf tips to the side, years of shoddy construction and over-stocking on heavy material finally catching up. With a sickening lurch, the nails are ripped out of the wall as the shelf goes down, catching itself on one of the roof-beams. The bottles rain down from the angled shelf, hitting the poor bastard who was still ducked underneath, hands raised in a futile attempt at protection against the onslaught. The smell of alcohol – fresh, heavy, potent – fills the air as it gushes along the floorboards, ferrying shards of broken glass to bump against Yasha’s feet.

_Oh, no_ , Yasha thinks, just in time for the halfling woman to release a crossbow bolt straight into Yasha’s shoulder. It hits, and she’s jolted back a half-pace before recovering enough to pull out her own broadsword. Beau lungs forward, cracking the human with her staff and sending him flying backwards into the pair of legs, which have revealed themselves to be a human female almost as tall as Fjord. They tumble backwards onto the stairs.

The halfling lets loose another bolt, which whips past Beau’s cheek and splinters onto the ground, dangerous close to where the gnome is coming-to on the floorboards. “ _Ruined my nice tea set_ ,” he mumbles.

Rage burns through Yasha’s sluggish veins – a shot of liquid fire. Slow at first, and then building in intensity. With a wild laugh, she shoots past Beau to swing at the halfling, using the flat of her blade to knock her flat on the ground. _Don’t kill anything_ , she cautions herself, even as she feels the urge to reverse her blade and stick it through the halfling’s back. A haze of red clouds down on her field of vision, tinting the world in blood.

Every time Yasha fights, she’s born again, swallowed at sea and birthed out in a maelstrom of fury. No matter how hard she tries, she can never stay still – but here, amidst the sound of (an admittedly short) battle, it’s the closest thing she’ll ever get.

Beau kicks the man, who stays down. None of them are unconscious – though the gnome certainly looks concussed – but they don’t look like they’re willing to get back up and go for round two.

“Just,” the halfling says, saving her hand vaguely around. “Take it.”

Yasha comes back into her skin, looking around at the broken bottle-shelf and the shards of glass that litter the floor. Everything thinks of cheap alcohol. There is no longer a man snoring in the corner.

Beau leans down and bares her teeth at the gnome, twirling her staff casually at her side. “Oh, wow,” she says. “It’s almost like we _are_ bandits.”

Yasha doesn’t even have the energy to groan, just lets out a small sigh and peers over the counter at the man under the shelf. He looks alive, at least, trapped between the wedge created by the shelf and the ceiling, but it’s an unstable relationship at best. She sheathes her sword and slides gingerly over the counter, mindful of the broken glass scattered everywhere, and starts pulling him out.

Of course, that’s when the door slams open and four guards come marching in, a half-sober man (whom Yasha vaguely recognises) bringing up the rear.

“That’s the one,” he says, voice unsteady. “She came in here and – _hic_ – started swinging that great big sword of hers around –”

Yasha stares at them, and then slowly raises her hands into the air.

…

…

Fjord is not impressed.

It’s very easy for Fjord to look unimpressed – unfairly easy, because Yasha has been working on her stern looks of disapproval for most of her life, and she hasn’t even come close to how Fjord looks with one eyebrow ticked up and his hands folded along his chest. The effect is slightly ruined by the way Jester is bouncing up and down next to him, but not by much.

“Morning,” Yasha says groggily. Beau is tucked close next to her side, arms crossed tight across her chest, teeth bared.

“Well?” Beau says. “Are you going to get us out or what?”

“I don’t know,” Fjord says. “Might do you some good, staying in there a little while. A learning experience.”

“I swear to god,” Beau says, half standing.

Fjord sighs. It’s a heavy sigh, full of disappointment and broken dreams. “I’ve spoken to the ehad guard. He says he’ll let you out with a warning.”

“Oh, good,” Beau says. Yasha says nothing.

“And two hundred gold,” Jester adds, happily munching away on a bear claw. Where she keeps finding such delicious-looking pastries in such a backwater place, Yasha doesn’t know.

Beau gapes at him. “ _Two hundred gold_ ,” she mouths. She clears her throat. “You know they called Yasha a bandit, right?”

“Don’t worry, Fjord says that he will help you pay, because he should have known better than to send you after Yasha,” Jester says.

Fjord glances at her. “You were supposed to wait until _after_ they got out to tell them that. I wanted them to stew for a little while.”

“Oh, sorry,” Jester says. She doesn’t sound the least bit sorry.

Beau scowls. “Did you at least find us somewhere to stay?”

Jester starts laughing at them.

Yasha sighs and closes her eyes. “Wake me up when you’ve paid the bail.”

…

…


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shopping shouldn't have to be this stressful.

“That’ll be two hundred and seventy-eight gold, please.”

Yasha glances up. There’s a hand held out, palm open, barely a metre from her. Yasha blinks around as everything comes back into focus, sliding out from grey to colour.

The rest of the group has moved on. There’s no one occupying the space behind her, and it’s a cold feeling that bleeds down her spine as she struggles to properly occupy her present space. She vaguely remembers Caleb feverishly mumbling “bookstores” before dragging Nott away. Jester had been – hungry, maybe? No one had quite the energy to argue with a hungry Jester.

The man in front of Yasha is small and stocky, easily half of her size. It’s a more common affliction than it sounds – Yasha has spent most of her life looming over strangers. Growing into her bones had been a painful experience of bruised knees and strained lungs and stares. So many stares. For all of her life, from the moment Yasha was born, she has been the subject of stares.

He is nondescript, a face out of a thousand faces. Human, maybe. His clothing speaks of money, though his wares don’t – two hundred and seventy-eight gold for the thing in Yasha’s hand is less bargain and more blind robbery.

“Uh, no. Thank you,” Yasha says, putting the thing gingerly back onto its shelf. The stall is a temporary construction of slotted, sanded pieces of driftwood – the group had been wandering close during the initial setup, watching as the owner had unpacked his cart and pulled everything together in the span of twenty minutes. Around them, at the crossroads, almost thirty other people have opted into this travelling marketplace. Glass glitters in the morning light. In the distance, Beau is haggling for something small and pretty-looking. Nott is trying to steal a jewelled statuette.

“Are you sure?” the man says. “That’s my best piece, right here.”

It’s…garbage. A knotted piece of fabric swaddling a rock the size of a goose-egg. Yasha likes the weight of it, the smooth green colour, but she doesn’t like it enough to pay two hundred and seventy-eight gold. At the moment, Yasha doesn’t even _have_ two hundred and seventy-eight gold. A part of her wants to just walk away, but she’s trapped, now, in a web of words. Yasha has an unfortunate habit of getting out of store-side conversations by just buying something, but there’s no way she’s doing that here.

“It’s enchanted,” the man says. His smile is practiced. His teeth are very straight. “Anyone who has it on their person can turn _invisible_.”

Yasha shakes her head, trying to keep from making any large gestures. She’s learned long ago that being as big as she is, it’s easy for people to claim _I was threatened_ without much need of evidence. Not that evidence had ever been needed in the first place.

“No, I’m – fine,” she says. There’s something in the man’s eyes. Something – something small, like glitter –

“It’s so very useful,” the man says, low and soothing. He doesn’t stop smiling. “It’s beautiful, it is. Look at it. Reach out and touch it – yes, just like that. Spend some time with it, and, well. No one will ever have to see you again.”

Something tight twists into Yasha’s gut, something visceral and hard enough to leave her winded. She struggles to breathe around it, struggles to take a step back.

What Yasha wants to say is, _I’m fine, thank you_. Clean, simple, effective. It shows a lack of interest while remaining polite. Yasha always intents to part on good terms, though the reality of the situation rarely matches up.

People don’t like the way Yasha looks. The way her eyes glow when she’s angry, the way blood looks when it spatters across her pale, pale cheeks. It marks her something vengeful, something unnatural. Something bloodthirsty.

(There is so much in Yasha that craves blood).

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” the man says, looking up straight into Yasha’s eyes. The surprise kicks her back – when people are shorter than her, direct eye contact is infrequent at best. Yasha wants to drink it in. Yasha wants to look away. “To never be seen again?” I can do that, you know. Just take that stone, and all your troubles will be over.”

Yasha shakes her head. Slowly. It takes effort, but she does it.

The glitter sparks, bright light flickering. His eyes widen, voice deepening. The rest of the world begins to peel away, sloughing off her bones like rotted skin. Molly is – somewhere. Not here. Fjord stayed close, hadn’t he? Or had he left, too? Yasha can’t remember.

The stone is cool under Yasha’s palm, soft as silk. She rubs her thumb over it, and then again. There’s a soothing sort of repetitiveness to the gesture, to the way it sits in her hand.

Something flashes blue, just out of the corner of her eye. Something warm weighs down her collarbone. Yasha blinks, and then puts down the stone. Again, a flash. Yasha blinks, and takes a step away.

_Mine_ , something says, in the back of her mind. Her holy symbol burns hot.

“No. Thank you,” Yasha says, forming the words from somewhere deep underwater. Noise seeps back in, washing over her. Jester is yelling in the distance. Yasha tries to take another step back, shaky. She’s almost in the middle of the street.

They are standing in the corner of the temporary marketplace, the vendor and Yasha. Everything on either side is facing away, boarding a thin dirt path that cuts smoothly through the grass. The Mighty Nein had made camp here just last night, amidst a distinct absence of other people. Come morning, the ground had been full to bursting with caravans and sellers putting up along the marked grooves. From the easy familiarity the shop owners seemed to possess, it hadn’t taken the Mighty Nein to realise this was a regular occurrence.

“No one will ever look at you again,” the man promises.

Yasha tries to say something, but she can’t. The words sit low in her throat, cutting off her oxygen and drowning her lungs. _I don’t want that_ is a lie. All of it is a lie. Yasha wants something like that so bad she can feel envy blister across her skin. _I don’t need that_ is a lie. Everything Yasha wants to say isn’t true, except for _I don’t trust you_ , which very much is.

And two hundred and seventy-eight gold is a lot, for a rock. For a rock that probably doesn’t even work. The further away Yasha gets, the further away she is to being convinced that the rock is real.

The vendor steps out from where he’s been tending to the rest of his wares. He’s taller than Yasha had initially pegged him, but not by much. He straightens out his shoulders as he walks right up to her, putting a hand onto Yasha’s wrist and pulling her a little bit forward. Yasha doesn’t want to back up, ad she doesn’t see the movement in time – by the time she notices that he’s put out his hand, it’s already clamped down hard over her skin.

“I can make it all go away, little celestial,” the man promises, glitter in his eyes, teeth in his mouth. He has a lot of teeth.

(This morning, Jester had sat down the rest of them and said, _We don’t want to make a scene here, today._

_You’re usually the one making the scene_ , Fjord said, unimpressed.

Jester waved him off. _We are just here for a few hours, and then we have to keep going. So be good, okay?_

Everyone looked at Nott.

_No promises_ , Nott said.

Yasha hadn’t promised anything either, not really, but –)

“I – I just –”

“ _Yasha_! There you are, stop wandering off like that –” Beau says, pushing her way through the thin crowd in order to stand next to Yasha. She doesn’t tower over the man like Yasha does, but there’s a decent amount of height difference. Beau stares down her nose at the vendor, slinging an arm with deceptive casualness around Yasha’s other elbow.

“Beau,” Yasha says blankly.

“We were just discussing price,” the vendor says. “Perhaps you would like to come and view my wares, as well…?”

“Not really,” Beau says, tugging a little on Yasha’s arm. “C’mon, we’ve got to get going.” Her voice drops. “Nott did something not very smart, and –”

The man’s fingernails dig into Yasha’s wrist, and something ugly and red starts to shift under Yasha’s skin. She flexes her fist and tries not to let it show. People are so breakable. Yasha has spent all her life trying to stop herself from breaking them.

“In a minute,” the man says.

“We seriously need to go _right now_ ,” Beau says.

“I,” Yasha says, struggling to breathe.

Someone starts shouting in the distance, close enough to have Yasha instinctively reaching out for her sword. Beau takes the opportunity to reach over and whack the man with her staff, dragging Yasha away from his grip in the momentary confusion. There’s a howl behind them as they hurry towards their cart, which is parked -somewhere else. Yasha is already lost, and they haven’t even turned off the main dirt path.

Thankfully, Beau seems to know where to go, because not a minute later they’ve caught up to Fjord and Molly. The former looks stressed, while the latter looks extremely amused. Both are out of breath.

“There you are!” Molly says when he sees them, grabbing onto Yasha’s arm and hauling her forward. What is it with people grabbing her today? Yasha hasn’t felt this manhandled in years. “Quickly, now. I’m afraid we’ve run into a bit of a troublesome situation. Jester should be here in just a few –”

“FIRE!”

They all whip around in time to see one of the tents burst into flames, the metal poles twisting under the intense pressure. Yasha ducks out of the way just in time for a flaming piece of wood to sail over her head, nailing Fjord square in the chin. He stumbles back a few steps, eyes unfocused.

“Oh, hell,” Molly says, just as something lunges into view. It is tall, and terrible, with glittering eyes and teeth for miles. It smiles at them, red leathery skin gleaming in the firelight.

“ _Hell_ is correct, cousin,” it hisses, tongue sliding out from its mouth to curl around its scaly lips. He stares directly into Yasha’s eyes. “Come here, little celestial. I can make it all go away…”

Fjord is sitting on the ground near them, Molly obviously torn between getting the concussed man out of the line of (literal) fire and just activating his swords. Jester and Nott and Caleb are nowhere to be seen, which is simultaneously relieving and worrying. People are still shouting – it’s getting closer, but not close enough to distract Yasha from the way this creature is looking at her. _I can make you unseen_ , it says, and Yasha’s skin crawls.

(Yasha wants so, so badly for people to just _stop – looking –)_

Yasha’s holy symbol bubbles and blisters and burns her skin, white hot. She is so angry. All of her life, Yasha has been so angry. It washes her vision red and draws her lips into a ghost smile, into a pretend smile, so she can show off just how many teeth _she_ has. Not as many as the thing in front of her, but a lot. Yasha has a lot of teeth.

Inhale. Exhale.

_Snap_.

…

…

“I cannot believe you ended up back in jail.”

“Shut up, Fjord,” Beau says, glaring balefully at the free man. There’s a nasty bruise along the right side of her temple that runs all the way down to her shoulder, the skin almost as green as the half-orcs’. Yasha is covered in lacerations and pieces of…thing. She is very carefully not thinking about it. A bath sounds heavenly right about now.

“Now, now,” Fjord says. “Is that any way to talk to the person getting you out of here?”

“Why aren’t _you_ in here?” Beau demands.

“I’m just an innocent bystander,” Fjord says. “You were the one who destroyed all those stalls.”

“We were _fighting_ a literal _evil creature from the bowels of hell –”_

“Now, now, no need to get testy,” Fjord says. “I’m the one paying your bail money. You two are going to cost me a fortune. Is this going to be a regular thing? Should we start setting up a party fund, just in case?”

“No,” Beau says, at the same time as Yasha says, “Probably.”

When Beau twists to give Yasha a hard stare, Yasha can only shrug awkwardly.

“Uh, this is your – third time? – in just. A few months. I don’t think, well...”

Beau sets her chin mulishly. “You’re one to talk.”

Yasha gives a vague and unhelpful gesture, shoulders at her ears. “I guess,” she says.

“Where _are_ the others, by the way?”

Fjord’s sigh is painful and drawn out. “They were taken to a different holding cell,” he says. “As soon as I deal with you, I’m going to go and get them.”

…

…

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this would have been posted yesterday if work hadn't SCREWED ME OVER for HR training and made me go to fucking cromer. CROMER. unbelievable. 
> 
> (I would have edited in my lunch break, but I didn't GET a lunch break, so). 
> 
> Siigh.
> 
> (on the other hand I DID IT I FINALLY UPDATED THIS FIC WOOHOO)

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to part 2 of "mneme is too stupid to live"! phew, I was cutting it a bit close this week, but I got it done :P
> 
> this fic probs won't be updated weekly, but this series will be. this show and this fandom is seriously the best, and I'm having so much fun writing these two nerds. 
> 
> this week's theme? "cold", which is appropriate because NSW is an icebox atm. *brrr*


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